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This is somewhat hilarious yet oddly factual.

From Search Engine Journal’s post Why Doesn’t Google Honor Memorial Day in the US?

Google, we love you, but you really can’t have it both ways. You can send Larry Page to Washington DC the week before Memorial Day to ask our Congress for access to the property of the citizens of the United States, but you cannot honor those who have given their lives to create and protect the Constitution of the United States of America?

After investigation I found that this is definitely an ongoing issue. Check out Google’s historic holiday logos and you’ll see that even though Mother’s Day, Earth Day, and even the Persian New Year is celebrated, Memorial Day isn’t.

From the LA Times on Memorial Day, 2007:

"When they ignore Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I think they’re telling us something about the way they view America," said Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily.com, a conservative website that has criticized Google’s logo decisions.

In that same article, Google had a response:

The company defended its decision to let Veterans Day and Memorial Day pass without a special logo, saying it was trying to be respectful.

"Google’s special logos tend to be lighthearted and often scientific in nature," spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger said in an e-mailed statement. "We do not believe we can convey the appropriate somber tone through this medium to mark holidays like Memorial Day."

Google has altered its logo more than 140 times since 1999, according to a gallery on the company’s website.

Related Posts:

Google decides to give Memorial Day a miss

Google Lets Memorial Day Down Once Again

Google Once Again Snubs Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, Google STILL Unpatriotic… Yahoo! Rocks!!!

Update: Google Plots MoH winners on GoogleEarth

Here’s one interesting spin and/or development:

Memorial Day - US Medal of Honor Recipients in Google Earth

I wonder if this were some act of conservative or independent Google Fifth-column subterfuge in the timing of it to coincide with Memorial Day…

Today, Memorial Day 2008, I’m sitting here alone writing. The kids are with their mom. My friends have long left for barbeques. The television is off and has been all day.

Today for the first time in eighteen years, it’s about memorializing my friends who will never have kids, who will not see another barbeque or a beer. It’s also about realizing that I lost more friends in seven years of peacetime service than most Americans have in the past seven years of warfare.

Most of my friends died after living only a few short years out of high school. They are my heroes.

As I’ve said before in the postscript of Bug’s Prayer and Core Values these are the types of people I want my boys to hear about when they ask what a hero is.

One hero who might not be remembered was a friend of mine from aircrew school, Rick Tafoya.

Rick was an Aviation Ordnanceman - AO Aircrewman, not directly in my rate. This was before they made all Aircrew jobs AW jobs.

Rick was cool and a great guy to hang out with, full of energy and positive about his future.

Richard (Rick) Tafoya - VP-50 Blue Dragons d. 1991

I remember running into Rick at the NAS Moffett McDonalds just a few months before his death. It was that night that I had a premonition that one of us wasn’t going to make it. Of course I thought it would be me dying, not him, and that part I recall as clear as yesterday.

Had I not picked VS as my platform. it could have easily been me onboard a VP-50 plane. I would have been in the VP pipeline, and knowing those folks at Alameda and Moffett, I probably would have picked orders to a squadron based there.

There I was… Bored on a Friday…

I was bored one Friday night in either in late 1990 or early 1991 and being underage in San Diego I decided to deadhead up on a C-12 transport to Moffett and see if any of my friends up there were having a fun time. I had just started my final school before the fleet and decided, Have Flightsuit, Will Travel. I knew some of the C-12 aircrew from my time at Pensacola where we all shared common survival training.

In fact one of them stationed at NAS Alameda, Scarlett "Sarah" Connor (best said in a Terminator style voice), was an aircrew classmate of mine from 1989 and she and I definitely did the Aircrew ‘cracks’ together, the O Course, and many other things.

She was also one of the roommates of the very first Navy female to complete SAR school in 1989. Scarlett was stationed up at NAS Alameda and was a blonde knockout who always had a great group to party or hang out with. I figured I would see what was going on and return to North Island either that night on the return leg or on Sunday night.

Of course this was before cell phones, remember what it was like to try to connect with anyone before cellular? If all else failed, I reasoned, I would bomb around the base until I found someone I knew.

I landed at Moffett and couldn’t locate anyone I knew by phone so I decided to take the Duty Driver up on his offer to grab some McD’s before the return flight to San Diego’s NAS North Island. We headed over there and as I walked out I saw Rick.

Rick had a scruffy beard growth and had just broken his arm. He had a grin on a mile wide when he saw me as I was going in and he was coming out.

"You’d better get a shave there shipwreck!" I shouted to Rick, "…don’t you remember that from P-cola?!?"

Rick was laughing as he had seen me at the same time and threw his arms halfway around my back as we shook hands.

We stood there for a short time, catching up.

Rick told me that he didn’t have to shave because he was on light duty, having just broken his arm snowboarding. I told him that I was headed back to NAS North Island but that I would come up again when I had a chance so we could hang out.

He also offered to teach me how to snowboard the next time I was up. According to Rick, the snow was killer in the Sierras. I think he mentioned Mammoth but it could have been Big Bear.

I was on a clock for the return flight so Rick gave me his squadron duty desk phone number and we parted company, me walking out and him walking to the counter to make his order.

I remember it like it was yesterday what happened next. When I walked out those doors a small voice in my head said,

You better turn around, because this is the last time you’re ever going to see Rick.

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I’ve lost a few friends while in the service. There have been times that I didn’t know if I would make it myself - whatever scrape or close call occurred I made it out.

Those who didn’t still deserve my remembrance. I have a few friends, some close, some not so close.

All were brothers

I recall five years ago I was at the gas pump at Costco here in San Diego and saw a helo patch and aircrew wings on the flight suit of the guy next to me.

I introduced myself, rattled off four names and he brightened when he recognized one. I told him that guy used to be my roommate off-base.

He stuck out his hand, saying, Good to meet you, Brother.

We all ran the seawall. We ran the obstacle course and the cross country course. We sweat together. We bled together. We learned our inner limits and then we pushed them farther than we thought possible.

In doing so, we grew up together and as such, we were brothers.

The first two fleet S-3 Viking AWs I met are both dead. Both died outside the combat zone by violent means. One as the casualty of a robbery in progress, the other from self-inflicted wounds, perhaps from scars we all share.

We all hurt when one of us hurts

I remember one fall day in 1989 Millington, Tennessee when I was in A School going out to the flight line to see the Viking. I had wanted to fly in jets since I found out it was possible for this 17-year-old volunteer to do so. McCracken and Mongo (at least I think it was Mongo) were standing by the jet.

Trevor McCracken - VS-38 Red Griffin Viking SENSO d. 1992

I remember Crack particularly because he was the one who let me, as an 18 year old sit in the SENSO station for the first time on a cold Sunday in Tennessee. Climbing in, I remember the smell of the aircraft I would later fly nearly 900 hours in, I remember the walkthrough he gave me on the ejection seat. I promised myself I would fly in one of those jets.

Crack served with VS-38 during Operation Desert Storm, got an air medal, and would later return to Millington as an instructor. It was his unexpected death only a few months after starting his first shore duty that shocked all of us who knew him.

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Continuing my Memorial Day series… Here’s an analysis and OpEd piece done by Joe Lieberman.

Democrats and Our Enemies | Wall Street Journal

By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
May 21, 2008; Page A19

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party.

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[Pic] The USS Lake Erie launches a Standard Missile-3 at a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 20, 2008.

A good conceptual / historical look at the Halo II Lake Erie Aegis SM-3 Standard Missile shoot-down.

I don’t know about you but I feel pretty darned safe from ICBM attack here in San Diego.

More video below the fold…

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This would be funny if it weren’t true… Ex-Army Chaplain Cleared in Gitmo Spy Case to be Obama Delegate - America’s Election HQ

OLYMPIA, Wash. — A former Army chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was cleared of spy accusations will be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Former Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim, was among the delegates pledged to Sen. Barack Obama who were elected by precinct representatives Saturday. He’s representing the state’s 9th Congressional District at the party’s convention in Denver in August.

My question regarding the dismissed spying accusations would be whether they were dismissed for a good reason, or for political expediency, or even to protect confidential sources from having to be revealed.

What I recall about Yee is that he was maintaining lines of communication between Gitmo prisoners and the outside world, something that was against both standard counterterrorism rules and also the Gitmo prisoner policies. Even worse is that Yee was a commissioned officer in the army at the time and should have known better.

The only way Yee would have felt confident in doing this type of activity is if he felt it was his calling as a Muslim Imam / Army Chaplain to disregard the ‘laws of man’. If that were the case, it sounds like his flock converted him.

I’ve been researching the production of distributed energy for years. This takes it one step further and allows the brewing of your own ethanol literally in your own backyard.

Related articles:

Micro Fueler Is First Ethanol Kit for Brewing Backyard Biofuels on the Cheap - Popular Mechanics

Agriculture: The New Disruptive Technology

Food & Fuel Prices | NRO

Ethanol waiver seen spiking gasoline $1/gallon

The Corn Conundrum | Reuters.com

Corn Hits $6 a Bushel on Tight Supplies

This section examines questions about GI Bill benefits - whether adding new benefits is a good thing, whether John McCain thinks that increasing spending is too expensive and would rather increase monthly benefits.

Do we owe a complete scholarship to military members?

This brings in the discussion about whether giving more benefits to veterans / military brings in the wrong crowd. One commenter states that doing this would result in more people are coming for the incentives rather than the mindset of service:

The interviewer asks the question of what makes military members different than the average citizen in that they say ‘no’ to their benefits when most Americans have their hands out.

Is it worth raising taxes?

What do you think about the proposed new GI Bill? Should we be spending even more money, and if so, why?

Turns out there are things that I didn’t learn in the Navy about this subject… I think I might have to screen the comments on this one.

From FOXSexpert: Are We Nip/Tucking the Wrong Places?

It is no wonder that, based on a lack of safety and efficacy data, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has warned that the following “vaginal rejuvenation” procedures are unproven and potentially risky.

— Labiaplasty: Nip and tuck has taken on a whole new meaning, with many women wanting a "neat and tidy" look. Believing that their inner lips are “too large,” protruding beyond the outer lips, or asymmetrical, these women see their vulva as ugly. So labiaplasty procedures seek to change a woman’s external genital appearance – namely its shape and size. Most “improvement” efforts target the vaginal lips, with excess flesh cut and reshaped using a laser, scalpel or curved scissors.

— Vaginal Liposuction: Fat is liposuctioned from a woman’s upper thigh or lower abdomen and injected into her labia for a plumper, softer look.

— Vulvar Lipoplasty: Fat is removed from the mons pubis or outer labia for a more “aesthetically pleasing” look and contour.

— Clitoral Hood Reduction: Skin tissue around the clitoris is trimmed. One important note: this procedure can make this prime hot spot less sensitive.

— Vaginoplasty: Cosmetic vaginoplasty, or vaginal rejuvenation surgery, involves a variety of surgical procedures — for example, laser vaginal rejuvenation — that alter the vagina. Women seeking such surgeries want a tighter vagina that offers more friction. A surgeon creates this by cutting the vaginal muscles and reattaching them. Is it any wonder that critics consider these surgeries the Western version of female genital mutilation? (The desire for virgin-like tightness is one of the many reasons the African practice of female genital mutilation is performed).

— G-shots: Women seeking a more sensitive G-spot are going for this procedure, which involves a collagen injection to the front wall of the vagina. This G-shot is supposed to make the area more accessible and sensitive for up to four months. Yet there is little scientific evidence to back the claims. There have been no double-blind placebo-controlled studies have been published on this procedure.

Check out FoxNews’ responses for a good grin.

According to the article… S-3 Vikings were originally designed as an anti-submarine warfare aircraft, but are now used mostly for maritime surveillance and as an air refueling plane.

However, some have been modified for electronic warfare and intelligence gathering.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US Navy surveillance jet lost its way during a counter-drug mission and strayed into Venezuelan airspace, US officials said Monday following a vehement Venezuelan protest.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel called the overflight "a deliberate action" and "another link in a chain of provocations."

Rangel said the Venezuelan air defense system tracked the S-3 Viking over the Venezuelan island of La Orchila on Saturday at 8:40 pm (0010 GMT Sunday).

The island is a military base and a presidential retreat that lies in the Caribbean just north of the Venezuelan mainland.

This is almost funnier than the time one of the Hoovers lost an engine cover over the Hotel Del Coronado….

"A US S-3 aircraft conducting counter-drugs operations lost navigational situational awareness causing it to fly into Venezuelan airspace off the mainland coast," the Joint Interagency Task Force South said in a statement.

The aircraft was assigned to the military-led task force, which directs US counter-drug operations in the Caribbean from its headquarters in Key West, Florida.

Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the S-3 aircrew was queried by Venezuelan air traffic control at Maiquetia after experiencing "intermittent navigational problems" while on a mission originating in Curacao.

The US Air Force operates a base for US counter-drug operations in Curacao, one of the Netherlands Antilles near Venezuela.

I wonder who was flying that bird. If it was truly a nav error, that’s whatcha get for not having a SENSO onboard!

I don’t think anyone disputes the fact that Hussein wasn’t directly behind the 9/11 attacks. There are some strong indicators that he was still a threat, most of which I covered in a previous thesis / post.

Interesting information as always from Mark Eichenlaub’s Iraq Regime of Terror blog:

A closer reading of the study (see here, here, here, here, here and here) shows that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq cooperated with, financed and supported a number of Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda proxies (at least five according to Thomas Joscelyn) and had a larger capacity for state apparatus terrorism (car bomb training, IED training, jihadist suicide bomber recruitment, etc.) than previously believed by many.

Of the many noteworthy findings in the report is the assertion made in the conclusion that Hussein had retained not only the capacity to launch anti-West terrorist attacks but the will to use those terrorist capabilities, including directly against the United States, which was also a matter of previous debate.

The report’s conclusion, while noting that a perfect grasp of Hussein’s mindset at the exact time of U.S. invasion remained elusive, states that "evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces."

Still, there are reasons that I have felt justified our actions.

My opinion on invading Iraq - three years later…